[adw]

Everything makes money by selling something, whether directly or indirectly.

There are something like five things you can sell via or over the Web:

i) sell products which you buy or make yourself (ecommerce)

ii) sell services which you generate (x-as-a-Service)

iii) resell other people's products or services on commission (affiliate marketing)

iv) sell your audience's attention (advertising)

v) sell your audience's behaviour (usually to advertisers or publishers so they can sell more advertising – behavioural targeting)

That's what you've got. Only two of these directly require you to take payment, but they're the easy ones to understand...

[whatusername]

http://xkcd.com/792/

Collect your audiences personal details and use them for nefarious ends while twirling your mustache and hiding out in a secret lair in a volcano. (Kinda like how Zuckerberg does it)

[mseebach]

vi) be a loss-leader for something else.

In the case of a personal websites, that something else might your career, raising your profile to potential employers/contracting clients.

It's not strictly making money itself, but in the long run, it might have a very decent ROI.

[adw]

Sure, but in that case, the website is a marketing campaign for something else, not a product. (We're not disagreeing, really, it just depends on how you're setting the scope.)

[satishf]

This is going to be my first app so raising my profile will also be very rewarding.

[satishf]

This will be a niche website which falls into the 'iv) sell your audience's attention (advertising)' category.

[adw]

Depends on the niche. Have a look and see what typical keywords you expect to wind up on your site garner on AdWords; if you can attract eyeballs for less than, say, 40% of that price (to allow for Google's margins) – including your time or cost for content generation – then you might make some money.

But you'll need quite a lot of traffic in a reasonably high-purchasing-intent niche.